River Phoenix has been dead longer than he was alive. This week marks the 25th anniversary of his untimely demise outside the Viper Room, a West Hollywood nightclub once owned by Johnny Depp.

With acclaimed performances in Stand by Me, My Own Private Idaho, Running on Empty (for which he was nominated for an Oscar) and The Mosquito Coast under his belt, at the time, Phoenix, 23, was a star ascendant.

His official cause of death on Oct. 31, 1993, was due to “acute multiple drug intoxication.” Cocaine and heroin were found in his system, as well as Valium, marijuana and ephedrine, an ingredient in over-the-counter cold medications.

His girlfriend, Samantha Mathis, who was with him the night he died along with siblings his Rain and Joaquin, recounted that fateful evening in a recent interview with The Guardian saying, “I knew something was wrong that night, something I didn’t understand. I didn’t see anyone doing drugs but he was high in a way that made me feel uncomfortable – I was in way over my head.”

Like so many others, for both famous people and regular folk alike, as day gave way to darkness, his brief respite from a film set in Utah started out as a way to blow off steam before ending in tragedy and endless what-ifs?

In this undated photo provided by the Miami International Film Festival, actor River Phoenix is shown while filming the movie “Dark Blood.”

In the days and months after his passing, Phoenix was likened to James Dean – another Hollywood star who died young.

But in the years since, his limited cinematic output hasn’t achieved the iconic status of Dean’s, who appeared in Rebel Without a Cause, Giant and East of Eden – the latter two of which garnered him Oscar nominations.

Meanwhile, Phoenix’s contemporaries – Keanu Reeves, Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio, among them – have built mountainous film legacies lined with blockbusters.

Still, when Phoenix died, he was putting together an acting resume that would have traversed the worlds of indie, arthouse and major Hollywood fare. He was in the midst of filming Dark Blood – a small-budget thriller that was completed 19 years after his death – and was in pre-production for his role as the interviewer alongside Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in the film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.

He was also being eyed for The Basketball Diaries and Total Eclipse – parts that went to Leonardo DiCaprio – and the role of Cleve Jones in Gus Van Sant’s Milk, which was eventually played by Emile Hirsch.

Van Sant, who directed Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho, also wanted the actor to play Andy Warhol in a since-abandoned biopic.

Music was another passion of his. He formed a band with his sister Rain named Aleka’s Attic.

“He would have excelled at many things,” the Sun’s former film critic Bruce Kirkland says. “I believe he was the kind of actor that could do a major Hollywood blockbuster and follow up with an intimate, personal journey-type film.”

Kirkland interviewed Phoenix several times for the Sun and predicts that had the actor lived, “he’d be the guy working with the Martin Scorsese’s of Hollywood.”

In a short career that began in 1985 with Explorers and ended in 1993 with The Thing Called Love, Phoenix worked alongside some of the biggest names in show business, including Sandra Bullcok (before she was a star), Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier (twice), Kevin Kline, Keanu Reeves, Ethan Hawke and Dan Aykroyd. In addition to Van Sant, he was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Weir, Rob Reiner, Steven Spielberg and the late Sidney Lumet. He’s also one of the few actors to play both the son of an actor and the younger version of that same actor in different movies (Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

He was a product of an unconventional upbringing. The eldest of five children, his family were members of the Children of God religious group and his early years were spent travelling through Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. The children busked in the streets to make money but he attracted notice from casting agents. Phoenix worked in commercials before landing bit parts in television. His breakout role came in Reiner’s Stand by Me, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story. It’s one of the films, Kirkland says, that will stand the test of time.

Idaho, for which he won the best actor prize at the 1992 Venice Film Festival, is another.

River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves in a scene from “My Own Private Idaho.”

“He had the attributes to become a major Hollywood star, much like Leo has become since,” Kirkland says. “He had the looks, the personality and the obsession to detail in preparing for roles. He had a screen presence that radiates energy, and very few actors have that – that’s what makes a star. Even his own brother, Joaquin, has had to work harder to achieve that onscreen.”

Phoenix may not have had the same lasting pop cultural imprint of Dean and other creative types who passed away young (Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse come to my mind). But 25 years later, he exists as more than just a cautionary tale.

“Fame is really fleeting,” Kirkland says. “But there are certain actors that will be talked about, in part because of the lost opportunity and also because of penetrating energy they displayed on the screen.”

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